


There Are No Angels

by FettsOnTop (GTFF)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Moral Ambiguity, Slavery, Star Wars Rare Pairs Exchange 2018, bittersweet romance, cloning, layer upon layer of gray
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-07-29 23:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16274465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GTFF/pseuds/FettsOnTop
Summary: Shmi tells Anakin about angels, but she knows the truth.





	There Are No Angels

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tiend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiend/gifts).



When Shmi was little, her mother told her stories about angels. They were said to live on the moon of Iego. They had wings made of light and lived in castles that hovered in the sky. Some said they were magic, and could grant wishes. All agreed that they were the most beautiful creatures in the galaxy. “Are they more beautiful than you, Mama?” She had asked, and her mother smiled and kissed her cheek. Everyone said her mother was beautiful, especially the men who came to see her.

Shmi could still smell the perfume she wore, and the hear the soft jingling of the bells she wore in her long black hair. “More beautiful than me,” she answered. “But more importantly, they are good. They remind us that there is good in this galaxy.”

Shmi hadn’t understood. Not really. “Am I beautiful, Mama?”

“My Shmi, you are more beautiful to me than any angel.”

Her mother wasted away on spice until men no longer called her beautiful, and Shmi learned to be grateful that she was not beautiful like her mother was. There was nothing worse than being a beautiful slave.

It wasn’t until the very first time she held her son in her arms that she thought about angels again.

She told Anakin all about the angels of Iego and how beautiful they were. How they could soar on wings made of light. How they could grant you wishes, and carry you off to castles in the sky.

Anakin loved those stories.

And then one day Shmi was in the kitchen, trying to stretch their week’s rations into one more thin stew. Watto wasn’t the worst or stingiest master she’d had, but he didn’t seem to understand how much a growing human boy could eat.

Anakin rushed in, panting, his eyes wide. “Mom! Come quick!” He ran back out and she hurried after him. There were no immediate signs of trouble. No ships in the sky. The twin suns of Tattooine were setting, the air was cooling and everything was calm.

“Mom, over here! Hurry!

About ten paces from their home, a man lay sprawled out in sand. He wore combat armor and a helmet but no military insignia that Shmi recognized. She knelt beside him and felt for his pulse beneath the rim of his helmet. “He’s alive. Help me get this off.”

“It’ll have a lock in the back,” Anakin told her. He reached his nimble little fingers behind the man’s head and pulled them back immediately. “Ugh. Blood.”

Shmi looked at the dark red smear on her son’s fingers and shuddered. “I’ll do it.” She unlocked the helmet and slid it carefully up, half expecting to find a fractured skull inside. But the man within appeared to be unharmed. He was neither old nor young, with hair and brows as dark as her own and skin just a shade darker. “Go get Threepio,” she told her son. “I’ll need help getting him inside.”

When they lifted him, she saw the jetpack. His belt held holsters for twin blasters, but they were empty. He was probably a bodyguard or a mercenary of some sort, not the kind of man she should be bringing into their home. On the other hand, if she left him, no one else would help him. They would help themselves to his armor and jetpack and leave him there outside her door.

When they dropped him down onto her bed, the man stirred and groaned. His eyelids flickered, and golden brown eyes struggled to focus on her face. “Uhh...wh…”

“Are you an angel?” Anakin blurted out.

The man turned his head to look at her son. “ _What_?”

"I saw you fall out of the sky."

“Ani,” Shmi chided. “You can ask questions later. Go get some water for our guest, please.”

“Where’s my helmet?” The man demanded.

“It’s right here.” Her hands went searching over his armor, trying to find the releases. He caught her wrist in a gloved hand, and the bruising strength of his fingers sent a warning shiver up her back. “I need to remove your armor." She spoke as calmly as she could. "We found blood on your helmet.”

“Wasn’t my blood. I got stunned at close range. Probably cracked a few ribs when I landed.” He released her and tried to sit up, but that was clearly too much. He bared his teeth and hissed a curse before laying back down.

“Then you should be still and rest.” Shmi saw the sudden sheen on sweat on his brow. He was in a lot of pain. “You’re safe here. I won’t touch you without your permission.”

His eyes narrowed as he looked her over. Measuring her in some way. “Why are you helping me?”

“Because no one else will.” She looked over her shoulder. “And because I want my son to believe that good exists in this galaxy.”

The hard lines of his face softened slightly. “I’m Jango Fett.”

That night she slept with Anakin in his bed. In the morning, Jango politely asked for her help removing his armor. Anakin was fascinated by it, he examined each piece and asked question after question. “In the Mandalore system you could train to be a _beskar’goran_ ,” Jango told him. “They craft armor like mine, the strongest and best armor in the galaxy.”

“Wow. I wish I could go there.”

“Maybe you will someday."

“It’s not that simple,” Shmi said quietly. Anakin wasn’t so quiet.

“We’re slaves.”

She could hear the defiance in his voice. She heard it more and more with each passing year.

“So?” Jango said. “I was a slave once.”

“You were?” Anakin sat up straighter.

“In the spice mines.”

The spice mines. Every master’s threat. Jango told them the story that night, when their work was done. He told them about growing up in the Mandalore system in a time of constant war between factions. About being betrayed by his own people. About escaping the mines and becoming a bounty hunter.

He made it a good story for Ani. A story of adventure and perseverance. After Anakin went to sleep, he told her the rest of it. 

On the third night, Shmi pulled the curtain around her bed and laid down with him. They had to be careful of his injured ribs, but it was still nice to be held and touched. Afterwards he cupped her face with hands that were permanently scarred from mining spice and told her she was beautiful.

Shmi had learned long ago that life afforded her few real pleasures, and to value them but also to hold them loosely. Jango Fett was no angel, but he was in her life and in her bed and the warmth of his eyes made her feel like she _could_ soar across the sky.

On the eighth day, she and Ani returned to the house after work to find him dressed in his armor, his helmet on the table beside a large crate of food. “You didn’t have to do that,” Shmi told him. “I never asked you for any kind of payment.”

“That’s not your payment.” He opened a small bag and began laying credit chips on the table. “In my world, everyone has a price on their head. This is how much mine is worth.”

Shmi had never even seen credit chips with denominations that high. Not even from the bets that Watto placed when he made Anakin compete in the podraces.

“It’s your money. Buy your freedom. Go anywhere you want.”

She couldn’t believe this was real. Where would they go? Far away from here, but _where_?

“There’s one more thing,” he said as he stood. “I have a job offer for you.”

“A job?”

“Yes. I have son who will be born in…” He looked at a small chronotimer attached to his gauntlet. “Thirty-one days, four hours and twenty-five minutes standard. I need someone I can trust to take care of him when I’m gone. I can’t give you all the details, but I can tell you that we’ll be living somewhere very remote. No contact with the outside world. We’ll get sick of one another, but you won’t be able to leave for at least five years. Do you understand?”

She hadn’t understood. Not until she saw Kamino, and the pods filled with clones. Millions of rapid-aged, disposable little soldiers. She wanted to understand. Jango was patient, he answered all of her questions. They talked late into the night, curled up in bed together. She never really understood, but she had to accept it.

Because there were no angels, really.

Except for little Boba, snuggled into her arms. His cheeks were fat and his black curls softer than anything in galaxy. He was never far from her side and hardly ever cried. Jango and Anakin fussed over him as much as she did.

“We should really make this official,” Jango told her the day Boba took his first step. His arm was around her waist, his golden eyes glowing with pride. The first batch of clones had started formation training the same day. Tiny little soldiers, puffing out their chests and learning to walk in crisp, orderly rows.

“We might still get tired of one another,” Shmi answered. He didn’t mention it again.

Ani had enough to eat. More than enough. Jango treated him like a son and taught him how to fight and how to pilot any ship in the galaxy. The Kaminoans were impressed with his technical skills. By the time he was fifteen he was down on the training floor giving orders.

At least it was safer than podracing.

“What will we do,” Shmi asked one night, her chin on Jango’s naked chest. "When this is all over?”

“You decide.” His rough fingers stroked her hair and brushed over her cheek. “I’ll go wherever you want. The next ten years of my life will be yours.”

Boba was getting too old for stories, but she told them to him anyway. She told him about the angels on the moon of Iego. How beautiful they were. How they could soar on wings made of light. How they could grant you wishes, and take you away to a castle in the sky.

His brow furrowed over golden brown eyes. They were exactly like Jango’s eyes. Exactly like the eyes of the full-grown men who marched past her in the hall in their shiny white armor.

“Are angels real?”

“No,” she told him. “They aren’t real. But they are good, and they remind us to help others. There is good in this galaxy, Boba. Never forget that.”


End file.
